Democracy Now! Blog

On January 25, Cairo-based photojournalist Wally Nell was shot by the Egyptian police while photographing protests on the October 6 Bridge. "We were very deliberately targeted... The guy drove up, saw us, and then fired," he says. [includes rush transcript]

Renowned feminist and human rights activist Nawal El Saadawi was a political prisoner and exiled from Egypt for years. Now she has returned to Cairo and is participating in the protests in Tahrir Square. [includes rush transcript]

In recent weeks, popular uprisings in the Arab world have led to the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the imminent end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, a new Jordanian government, and a pledge by Yemen’s longtime dictator to leave office at the end of his term. We speak to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky in an extended interview about what these popular uprisings mean for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region, how U.S. fear of the Muslim Brotherhood is really fear of democracy in the Arab world, and what the Egyptian protests mean for people in the United States. [includes rush transcript]

As President Barack Obama’s attack on Syria appears to have been delayed for the moment, it is remarkable that Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting, on Sept. 11, with one of his predecessors, Henry Kissinger, reportedly to discuss strategy on forthcoming negotiations on Syria with Russian officials.

Across the United States protesters are standing in solidarity with the "days of rage" in Egypt. From San Francisco to Atlanta, Chicago to Miami, they have joined in calling for Hosni Mubarak to step down. On Monday, more than one thousand people gathered in front of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. Democracy Now! was there.

In his second report today from Cairo, newspaper editor Ahmad Shokr recaps the latest developments in Egypt: the rising death toll, the continuation of mass street protests, and Hosni Mubarak’s decision to name Omar Suleiman, the head of the country’s intelligence services, to be vice president. [includes rush transcript]

Ahmad Shokr, an editor at the Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, files a report from Cairo on Saturday morning, day five of the largest anti-government protests in Egypt in decades. [includes rush transcript]

An Indian high court is hearing arguments to release the nation’s most famous political prisoner on bail and suspend his conviction. Last month, a trial court sentenced renowned physician and human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen to rigorous life imprisonment on the basis of an archaic colonial-era sedition law. [includes rush transcript]

We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, who traces the rise of the military-industrial complex through the story of the nation’s largest weapons contractor, Lockheed Martin. [includes rush transcript]

Renowned surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande discusses his frustrations with President Obama on healthcare reform, the ethical conundrums of learning and practicing medicine, and his most recent book, The Checklist Manifesto. [includes rush transcript]

Four prisoners in the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary have launched a hunger strike to protest what they call their harsh mistreatment under solitary confinement. The prisoners — Bomani Shakur, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Namir Abdul Mateen — were sentenced to death for their involvement in the 1993 prison uprising in Lucasville, Ohio. For over 17 years, they’ve been held in 23-hour-a-day solitary lockdown. [includes rush transcript]

Watch MSNBC’s Chris Hayes talk about the liberal interventionist argument for military action in Syria, with Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now!," former Congressman Tom Perriello, and Eli Lake, senior national security correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Dr. Binayak Sen is known as the "physician of the poor." He spent many years working as a doctor in the rural-tribal areas of Chhattisgarh in central India and reported on unlawful killings of indigenous people by the police and private militias. [includes rush transcript]

Former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla has been sentenced to life in prison. We speak with Hebe de Bonafini, one of the founders of the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an organization of Argentine mothers whose children were "disappeared" during the "dirty wars" of the ’70s and ’80s. [includes rush transcript]

DN! In Depth

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — The corporate television newscasts spend more and more time covering the increasingly disruptive, costly and at times deadly weather. But they consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and climate change.